Monday, June 26, 2006

Today, the CN Tower marks its 30th anniversary. Yup, on this day in 1976, the construction was finished on the CN Tower. After 30 years, it still holds the world's record as the tallest free-standing structure. Although, that is disputed, as in recent years, people have gotten really finicky when it comes to free-standing and spires on top and all kinds of stuff like that. And, there are some new construction projects in the planning stages that'll be taller than the CN Tower if they ever get built. In fact, the administrators of the CN Tower have admitted that, in this climate of bigger and bigger construction projects, they're surprised that they've held the record for this long.

But I digress. Naturally, there's all kinds of celebrations going on in Toronto today...parked in the CN Tower's parking lot today is "Olga," the Sikorski SkyCrane helicopter that lifed the upper parts of the structure into place.

I always wanted to see the CN Tower...I've been fascinated by it since I was a kid. Someday, I'll get out east...see the CN Tower, check out the national monuments in Ottawa, and further that other obsession of mine (the Olympics) by seeing Montreal.

Oh, and one last trivia note. The "CN" in CN Tower no longer stands for "Canadian National." CN's sponsorship deal ended in the late 90s. Now, the CN stands for "Canada's National." Sadly, my man, my hero, "Weird Al" Yankovic did not get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this year.

The push to get Weird Al a star on the Walk of Fame has gained some infamy in recent years...About 4 years ago, a group of hardcore Weird Al fans started "The Weird Al Star Fund," a campaign to raise the $15,000 needed for the Hollywood Walk of Fame application. The group even made the national news about a month ago, when they were achingly close to making the $15,000 and just barely made the application deadline for this year.

But, Weird Al was turned down for this year. Recording artist who are getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this year are Sean "Pi-Diddy" Combs, Mariah Carey, the Doors, Crystal Gale, LeAnn Rhimes, Tim McGraw and Shania Twain.

Weird Al's application carries over to next year...no need to raise another $15,000.With Superman Returns coming out on Wednesday, lots of news articles are starting to pop up about Superman. And I just have this to say to the journalists of the world.

STOP calling Superman "the caped crusader!" The Caped Crusader is Batman Superman is the Man of Steel. Got it? Good.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Long story short: It'll make you smile, but c'mon Pixar, you can do better.

and I saw it at Edmonton's fabulous North Edmonton Cinema movie theatre. As a movie junkie, I have often sketched on the back of napkins my ideal movie theatre. In Edmonton, North Edmonton Cinema (and its twin, South Edmonton Commons) come the closest. It especially nice when you can get there in the morning, with a big empty parking lot. They just rise up out of the ground...like a massive cathedral of cinema.

Well, I heard on the radio today that the NHL is in the midst of planning another outdoor game. That's very cool. You may remember the first outdoor game...2003's Heritage Classic, played between the Oilers and the Canadiens at Commonwealth Stadium.

Yes, even I watched the Heritage Classic on TV. The commentators had fun speculating on what else the NHL could do for outdoor games. The New York Rangers and the New York Islanders in Central Park...the Maple Leafs and the Senators on the Rideau Canal....

In still early in the planning stages, so we've got no idea yet what its going to be.Well, the ol' double dip is happening to The Lord of the Rings.

On August 29th, New Line is going to be releasing brand-new Limited Editions of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Disc 1 will contain both the theatrical versions and the extended edtions. Disc 2 will contain a brand-new feature-lenght documentary about the making of the film.

Wow. In order to get that whole 4-hour Return of the King: Extended Edition on one DVD, picture quality will probably be lower.And the latest movie rumour out of Hollywood today.

Matt Damon as Captain Kirk!

As we all know Alias creator and Mission: Impossible III director JJ Abrams is hard at work on making a new Star Trek film, and Abrams is apparently dead set on having Damon play the young James T. Kirk. Rumor has it that Abrams has already gotten William Shatner's blessing.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Well, today is a day that DVD enthusiasts have dubbed "Super Tuesday." With Superman Returns coming out next week, Warner Brothers has chosen this day to flood store shelves with every kind of Superman-related DVD that they had. If you do DVD shopping today, you'll find nothing but Superman on the shelves. This is what we got:

The Adventures of Superman: The Complete 3rd and 4th Seasons - 26 episodes of the original Superman show from the 1950s. Includes three featurettes about the making of the show.

Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - Season 3 - More adventures of Dean Cain romancing a desperate housewife. This season includes the infamous frog-eating-clone subplot. A few making of featurettes and other stuff.

Superboy: The Complete First Season - Hey! How many people knew that the Salkinds (the producers of the Christopher Reeve films) actually made a live-action Superboy show in the late-1980s? It was actually kind of successful and ran for four season. John Newton played the college-aged Clark Kent/Superboy in season 1, and Stacy Haiduk (who went on to be the cheif engineer of seaQuest DSV) played Lana Lang. Season 1 has all 26 episodes, and your requisite featurettes and running commentaries.

Superman: The Animated Series - Volume 3 - This 3-disc set contains the remaining 18 episodes of the fantastic animated series from the mid-1990s. Don't forget, this was from the same folks who made Batman: The Animated Series. Featurettes and running commentaries on select episodes.

Justice League: Season 2 - All 26 episodes (or, 13 1-hour episodes, if you go by the creators original vision) of my favourite cartoon on right now. This season includes a couple of my favourite episodes, namely Wild Cards, in which the League has to shut down the Joker's reality TV show, before the Joker levels Vegas. Running commentaries, featurettes, all that good stuff.

Superman: Brainiac Attacks - A brand-new straight-to-DVD movie in which Superman has to take down the unholy alliance of Lex Luthor and Brainiac. Tim Daly returns to the role of Superman. (He did Superman's voice on the 1990's cartoon, but was unavailable to work on Justice League.) The critics have already called this absolutly horrible, but I'll still rent it out of curiosity.

But, the crown jewel of today's releases is Look Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman. This straight-to-DVD documentary traces Superman's development and evolution through the years. It was commissioned by Bryan Singer, and it was made by Kevin Burns, the guy who made that Empire of Dreams documentary about Star Wars. They tell me that it's actually very, very good.

And also, it's finally official!

The first teaser for the live-action movie version of The Transformers goes online on July 5. It hits theatres on July 7, in front of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Monday, June 19, 2006

I just found this out this morning. They're called the Key Art Awards, and they are, essentially, the Oscars for movie promotional material. They give awards for the best movie poster, best website, best TV commercials...and best trailers.

Since I do love my trailers, this piqued my interest. Here's everything that won for the trailers:

Best Action/Adventure Trailer - Sin City: Trailer 1

Best Comedy Trailer - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Guide (this would be that 3-minute trailer that give the guide's entry on movie trailers)

About two years ago, all the trekkies were just atwitter. Some guys who know and understand Star Trek walked into Paramount's offices with their idea for a new Star Trek series. Who were those guys?

J. Michael Strazynski, creator of Babylon 5, and Bryce Zable, creator of the short-lived sci-fi cult classic Dark Skies, and the main creative force for three years of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Naturally, we wanted to know what new Star Trek series these guys had cooked up. Of course, their idea wasn't taken, and it disappeared into history.

Essentially, the two wanted to create an "Ultimate Star Trek" universe. And, their series was going to be "Ultimate Original Series." In fact, in their proposal, they even cite Marvel Comic's "Ultimate" line as an example of what they wanted to do.

They give their props to all incarnations of Star Trek, and then add, "Think of that as Universe A. Our series would be in Universe B."

But yeah. Just like Marvel's Ultimates, they wanted to re-imagine it and update everything with today's sci-fi cliches and conventions.

As we all know, the original Enterprise was on a 5-year mission. Based on that, their "Ultimate Original Series" was going to be designed to run for 5 years, and have an over-reaching mythology that would be resolved in those 5 years. What was the mythology?

Well, drawing their inspiration from the Next Generation episode The Chase...the one that said that all of us bipedal humanoid aliens came from one parent race...and that this parent race left a mathematical code on our DNA so we could seek them out when we reach a certain degree of sophistication.

The 5-year mission in this 'Ultimate Original Series' was going to be "seek out the parent race."

The new Prime Directive was going to be "Let nothing stand in your way."

I think there was potential there. But, throw it in the pile of "Cool Star Trek stuff that will never be," along with Harve Bennet's Starfleet Academy movie, Secret of Vulcan Fury, and all of Enterprise.

It's like this. James Blunt has heard You're Pitiful. He loves it, he thinks its hilarious, he's given his official thumbs up to the parody.

But, Atlantic Records, Blunt's record label, does not like it. So they've threatened legal action.

As Weird Al points out in the article, the legalities are fairly moot. It's been shown many times that Weird Al is officially parody, and is therefore safe from all kinds of lawsuits like this one. But still, rather than launch into a long, drawn out legal battle, Weird Al decided to remove the song from his album.

As Al says in the article, James Blunt could ask Al to put the song on his next album, but Blunt doesn't want to alienate his record label. Al could go ahead and put it on his next album, but his record label doesn't want to start a war over this.

In the end, Al says that he's always respected the original artists, so if James Blunt were saying "no" to this parody all along, then You're Pitiful would never see the light of day. But, since this is just "a bunch of suits -- who are actually going against their own artist's wishes," Al has no problem with releasing the song for free through his website.

And, as Paul Harvey always says, "Now you know the rest of the story."

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

First up, after all this time, the CBC is letting go of Mr. Dressup. Yes, Ernie Coombs retired 11 years ago and passed away shortly after, but the CBC has been showing it in reruns every day for the past 11 years. But now, Mr. Dressup is being bumped from his 5-times-a-day morning timeslot to one lowly slot early on Sunday morning. And then, by September, Mr. Dressup will be phased out completely.

Secondly, Industrial Light and Magic has gotten out of the practical effects business. ILM is, of course, the special effects house that did the effects for the Star Wars movies. Practical effects are special effects that are done with models and miniatures. Well, it's all computer animation at ILM these days, so they've sold off their practical effects department. The practical effects department was sold to Mark Anderson, a former ILM modelmaker. The practical effects department is now a company known as "Kerner Optical," and ILM has already made it clear that Kerner Optical is their #1 sub-contractor should the need for practical effects ever arise.

And finally, I learned today that my boss has been under the mistaken impression that I'm 34. Umm...no I'm not. I'm not old and bitter...I'm young and cynical. There's a huge difference.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Here's the wrinkle, though. One of the big buzzwords in Hollywood right now is "original DVD content." That's fancy marketing talk for straight-to-video movies.

The Dukes of Hazzard 2 is going to be straight-to-DVD.

With a budget of $5 million, they figure that it's going to be the most expensive live-action straight-to-DVD movie ever made.

It's going to be directed by Bob Berlinger, a veteran TV director. The only returning member from the theatrical cast is Willie Nelson as Uncle Jessie. Most everyone else is an unknown TV actor. Well, with the exception of veteran character actor Christopher McDonald as Boss Hogg.

It's called The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning. Yup, it's a prequel, showing us the young Dukes and how they first got into trouble with the law.

Monday, June 12, 2006

As you all know by now, Pixar's latest movie, Cars, came out this weekend. You know me, I love Pixar movies, but I haven't seen Cars yet. I got a couple of busy weekends coming up, so it'll probably be a few weeks still before I can jet down to Edmonton and see it.

Cars made $68 million in its opening weekend, making it the third highest Pixar opening ever. (#1 is The Incredibles with $70.8 million, #2 is Finding Nemo at $70.6 million).

What makes me sad, though, is it looks like Cars is the end of Pixar's dominance of computer animated films. Don't get me wrong, the reviews have been mostly good...just not overwhelmingly positive like all past Pixar films.

There are two big criticisms that are popping up. #1 is that the plot is too routine, cliched, and formulaic. I haven't seen it yet, so I can't speak to that. However, I do find it ironic that, when it comes to Pixar films, this criticism is thrown at John Lasetter's films. Lasetter, of course, wrote and directed the two Toy Stories, A Bug's Life and Cars. In all the DVD bonus materials, Lasetter is the one who harps on the importance of story..."Story is king," is his frequent quote. You think that the guy who harps on the importance of story would do better than a cliched, formulaic story.

The second criticism I always see is, "I just can't wrap my head around the concept of talking cars." Variants have stretched from "It's creepy to see cars as living, breathing creatures with no humans around" to "In this era of gas guzzling and global warming, a movie about cars is just wrong." My response to that is, "You're right. It is wrong. Please, give us another computer animated film about talking animals or a sarcastic fairy tale spoof. Please, oh please, don't give us anything new and different."

Hmmm...formulaic plot, but a new and different setting. Maybe Lasetter's problem is he's focusing on the wrong part to make new and different.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

It was one of those days where I was just going flat-out. Once I was done my on-air at 10, it was up to Athabasca University to cover day 1 of their convocation. Yup, Canada's biggest correspondence university has a real, honset-to-gosh convocation, in which their students from all over the world fly to Athabasca to finally meet their professors. It was really cool...lots of moms.

And from there, I was whisked off to Athabasca's Performing Arts Centre. Canada's first astronaut, Marc Garneau, stopped in town to give a lecture on space flight. I'll admit, I'm still enough of a science nerd that I would have gone even if I didn't need the news story. It was very, very cool meeting Canada's first astronaut.

And from there, my boss was able to weasel me into the Athabasc University President's fancy dinner party to celebrate convocation. I'll admit, I wouldn't have gone if it weren't for the really, really, really good free meal.

Anything else worth noting? Well, some interesting news on that brand new "Weird Al" Yankovic song that you can go download from the official "Weird Al" Yankovic website. Got the official Weird Al newsletter in my Inbox in which they say, "Go download it now, because it won't be on the new album." Hmm.... I also see from the official Weird Al website that the number of songs on Al's new album has gone down by one. I wonder if this song has something to do with the "record company politics" that Al cited as being the reason why the new album has been delayed. But it's a really funny song...classic Weird Al, so go download it!

And, my happiest news of the day, over at the official Clerks II website, they unveiled the official teaser posters today. And I just love, love, love this one of Rosario Dawson. I think we have a new champion for the title "sexiest movie poster."

They're doing a live-action movie version of Mulan, starring the girl from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Hong Kong movie star Ziyi Zhang, who was in the aforementioned Crouching Tiger, HIdden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and who just made her English-language debut in Memoirs of a Geisha, is on the verge of signing a 3-picture deal with the Weinstein Company. And what's up first?

Live-action Mulan.

The script is being written by Wang Hui-ling, who co-wrote Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This will have absolutly no connection to the 1998 Disney animated film...they're going all the way back to the epic Chinese poem about Hua Mulan for their source material.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

There. It is done. I watched the entire Matrix Trilogy in one marathon screening. I love watching movies that I haven't watched in a while. It tends to bring back memories of when I first watched the film...memories of a different time and a different place.

When I first saw The Matrix, it was April of 1999. My final semester of Augustana was coming to a close. In fact, I'm farily certain it was during that study break that happens shortly before final exams. Several of my fellow geeks had seen it when it first came out a few weeks before, and I'll admit, I really didn't want to see it. I hadn't been following its development online. the only thing I knew was the comic book controversy.

See, for those who aren't up on their pop culture history, on the opening weekend of The Matrix, people were to get a free Matrix comic book showing more stories from within the universe. But, at the last minute, the promotion was cancelled, all because some artist drew a billboard with the world "vagina" on it in one of the panels. The comic has long been released, so feel free to seek it out.

But back to our story. From the commercials, it was looking like just another lame action film. But, when the alpha geek in our group was getting a group together to go see it again, she talked me into coming along.

And, needless to say, my mind was appropriatly blown.

Back in those days, the Wachowskis were still inclined to do promotional interviews, and they dropped a few hints about a sequel. Viruses in the Matrix? Anomalies? Applying bullet time to car chases? The mind boggled. The Wachowskis also admitted that lots of anime influenced The Matrix, and they toyed with the idea of doing an anime prequel, showing how the war against the machines started...an idea that became The Animatrix.

And thus began my quest to get my best friend to see it. 1999 was a big summer for him...it was his first summer living with his girlfriend out in Vancouver. So, I sent him e-mail after e-mail urging him to see it. Finally, he relented, an in about August or so, he saw it in the dollar theatre. His mind wasn't blown...instead it was just a simple, "Yeah, it was OK."

So, you can imagine my shock four years later, when he dove head-first into they hype for The Matrix Reloaded and began devouring everything Matrix-related with a voracity I'd never seen him tackle anything with. When Reloaded came out, we were in Japan. Him up north, me near the centre. We were working for the same English school. The company was throwing money at him to stay. The company couldn't get rid of me fast enough. On the night before The Matrix Reloaded came out, he was scouring the Sapporo subway system for posters to steal. I was packing up to go home. He saw it opening day and promptly declared The Matrix Reloaded to be THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE.

I saw it about a week later, as I was doing my backpacking across Japan thing and was stopping over in Nagano. There was a theatre just around the corner from the ryokan I was staying at. And Reloaded was playing. That was definitly the second-coolest theatre I was at in Japan. It was essentially Camrose's Bailey Theatre...only in Japan. I sat up front and centre. As the end credits rolled, I text messaged my best friend to say, "Yeah, it was OK."

He came *this* close to ending our friendship. Because he though The Matrix Reloaded was THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE, and I thought it was merely OK. I'm still not sure what happened to him between 1999 and 2003 to turn him into such a voracious Matrix fan. But I'm sure he'll read this and tell me.

Flash forward six months. November 2003. The Matrix Revolutions. My first semester at NAIT was coming to a close, and I was seriously considering walking away from the whole RTA program. There I was, 26 years old. Several of my friends were saying, "Wow, I can't believe going back to school at YOUR age." Every day, I was in a class surrouned by 17 and 18 year olds fresh out of high school. For the first time in my life, I was feeling...old.

It was Revolutions' second day in theatres...a Saturday. I hopped in the car and drove into Edmonton to see it. The theatre was packed. I was really digging it...a lot more than Reloaded. And then...IT happened.

My favourite scene in the entire Matrix trilogy. Neo and Trinity, in their hovercraft, outrunning the Sentinels, and they finally go up...up...up beyond the clouds. They break through the clouds and...for the first time, Trinity sees the sky. The sun. White, fluffy clouds. The look on Trinity's face...it's as though she sees the face of God. And she utters that one word..."beautiful."

That scene inspired me.... Trinity kept me going.

And that's my life as seen through The Matrix Trilogy. Some random observations:

- The first one is still one darn fine movie.

- One thing my best friend and I did agree on about Reloaded: some of those highly touted special effects are way too CGI. Look at the now infamous Burley Brawl. In some parts, it looks like a freakin' video game cut scene.

- I sure hope Bryan Singer took some inspiration from it for Superman's flying scenes in Superman Returns. Think about it...that scene at the end of Reloaded where Neo is flying faster than he's ever flown before to save Trinity who's plummeting to her death. Replace Neo with Superman and Trinity with Lois Lane, and that's exactly the kind of spectacle I want in a Superman film.

- "Beautiful"

- Agent Smith's final rant during the final battle with Neo...that's your over-the-top cartoon supervillany. I love it.

And for those who missed my newsletter, I'm taking a sabbatical from Chaos in Print. It's just that, in my job now, I spend so much time writing that I really don't feel like doing more writing when I get home. Don't worry, Chaos in Print will be back someday...I just need a rest right now.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

I think I told you that, thanks to Zip.ca, I got the first couple of volumes of Galaxy Angel. Galaxy Angel was this very insane, very funny anime I'd watch on TV in Japan. I got the DVDs from Zip.ca in the mail, and the first thing I thought was, "I hope it's as funny in English."

Well, the truth is, it's funnier. Mainly because I get a lot more of the jokes now. (And yes, I was watching it subtitled.)

Sadly, though, this is apparently an earlier season then when I arrived in Japan. So, I didn't get to enjoy the very catchy theme songs from Galaxy Angel that always made me think of Japan.

So I found them on YouTube.

Here's the opening to Galaxy Angel that I'd always watch on TV in Japan:

And here's the closing:

That music...oh, I remember that music. Why didn't I pick up the soundtrack before I left Japan?

So, if you've been living under a rock or just avoiding any entertainment news for the past few days, then you probably don't know that Batwoman is making a comeback.

For those who don't care, Batwoman was a lame, female knock-off of Batman created back in the 1950s. She was never anything more than a girlfriend for Batman. A bored socialite by the name of Kathy Kane. They started phasing her out in the 60s, and she was unceremoniously killed off in 1979.

But, DC Comics has decided to bring her back. She's going to be in this new comic book series called 52. 52 is a weekly series - one issue per week - that chronicles a whole year in which DC's big three - Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman - have disappeared. Naturally, while the criminals think that Gotham City has become easy pickings, they find that a new Batwoman has risen up to fill in for Batman. Batwoman will be officially introduced in 52 next month.

Once again, Batwoman's true identity is sociallite Kathy Kane. Only in this era, she prefers to go by Kate.

Oh, and now she's a lesbian.

BOOM!! That's why this is news. She's gay. Out Magazine has already declared that the new Batwoman will be the highest-profile gay superhero in DC Comics.

but still, I have absolutly no idea why her sexuality makes this a newsworthy story. They resurrect a lame character from the Silver Age, only now, to develop her, they make her a lesbian. Fine. Whatever. There have already been gay superheroes. I don't understand why this one is news.

A person's sexuality - real or comic book character - shouldn't be news.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Wow. I had a busy week, so I haven't been able to sit down and break in my new TV by watching The Matrix or Serenity. I was looking forward to doing that this weekend.

And then, my first package from Zip.ca came.

Zip.ca is this online DVD rental place. You pay a monthly subscription fee. You click on the DVD you want to rent. They mail it to you. Once you're done watching it, you mail it back, and they send you the next one on your list.

I have a friend who's been a member for over a year now, and he's had nothing but good things to say about it. In fact, he's thinking about quitting because he hasn't gone outside and played in the sunshine for soooooooooo long.

He's tried to talk me into it, and I thought it'd be worth giving a try. I signed up earlier in the week, and my first package of DVDs came today. In case you're curious, here's what I got:

Blade: Trinity - Loved the first two, but missed the third one in the theatres. Finally time to check it out.

And I also got the first two volumes of Galaxy Angel. Galaxy Angel was this totally insane, absolutly hilarious anime I used to watch on TV in Japan. It's about an all-female group of fighter pilots who cruise the galaxy performing humanitarian missions. I wonder if it'll be as funny in English....

But yeah. I'm already questioning why I signed up. I mean, I've got my already-massive DVD library. And besides, you have to keep a wish list of at least 20 DVDs at all times. I was struggling to come up with 20. I thought there were so many more I wanted to watch.

OH, well. Let's have fun with this for a few months and see what traspires.